Hour of the Wolf
by samaside
Summary: After the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, Remus Lupin really is alone...


Title: "Hour of the Wolf"   
Author: Samaside   
Rating: PG-14   
Dislaimer: Own nothing but this individual idea. Ladypadfoot owns Lyria. Some clips from OOTP rewritten. Please dont sue me. Please!?   
Spoilers: Yes, for all books. Set shortly after OOTP.   
Summary: Remus Lupin is alone now...   
A/N: R&R please! I wrote this after rereading OOTP and wondering how Remus felt a bout Sirius's death. Right after he seems to be trying to act all level headed and keep a grip on the situation while Harry pretty m uch loses it. And I figured... Remus should have a chance to l ose it too. After all, Sirius was the last of his friends from Hogwarts. **This is a graduation present for the great Amalie!**

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_Lupin staggered as he took the brunt of the spell aimed that had originally been intended for Harry and Neville. "Impedimenta!" he shouted, pointing his wand at Malfoy. The Death Eater was blasted back into the concrete dais and stayed there for a moment, motionless. Lupin whinced as he picked himself off the ground. Look up he saw Sirius and Bellatrix still on the dais. For a moment, everything seemed to be going fine. But with one wrong step, Lupin realized that everything was not right.  
  
He watched as his friend took a red blast to his chest and began to fall. 'No...' he thought helplessly. 'Not into the veil...'  
  
And Sirius was engulfed by the veil.  
  
"SIRIUS!" he faintly heard Harry yell. "SIRIUS!"  
  
'Oh god... Sirius...'  
  
But Lupin couldn't allow himself to dwell. They were in the middle of battle and he needed to keep his mind focused. Sirius was dead. He had to keep Harry alive. He knew that he couldn't let Harry go after his gofather. He couldn't let Harry be lost behind the veil as well. As the boy began running towards the dais, Lupin grabeed him around the chest. "There's nothing you can do Harry-"  
  
"Get him, save him, he's only just gone through!"  
  
"It's too late, Harry," he tried to reason with the boy. 'He's gone, Harry...'  
  
"We can still reach him-"  
  
Lupin kept his grip as the fifteen year old struggled and shouted. If it was the last thing he ever did (and he knew that it very well may be) he had to keep Harry away from the veil. He was on the brink of tears he realized but forced them back. He had to keep his mind on the here and now.  
  
"He can't come back, Harry," he said, his voice breaking despite his best efforts. "He ca't come back, because he's d-"  
  
But Harry woudln't accept it.  
  
Lupin dragged him away, heading towards the wounded Neville. When they got there, the boy had stopped struggling but Lupin kept a firm grip on him anyways. He held on to Harry and lifted the spell off of Neville.  
  
"Let's..." He turned back a moment to the dais, involuntarily. Turning away, he continued, "Let's find the others. Where are they Neville?"  
  
As he listened to the boy, he loosened his grip on poor Harry's arm, worried that he was hurting the boy. Suddenly, behind them, there was a loud bang and he turned to see Kingsley fall.  
  
He started to yell out "Kingsley!" but was interupted as Harry tore loose from his grip and went after Bellatrix. "Harry-NO!" he shouted but to no avail. The boy was gone.  
  
He sighed and turned back to Neville. "Come on, Neville," he said. "Up you get. We need to get to the others..."  
  
And as they left, Lupin couldn't help but look back at the dais where Sirius had fallen just moments ago. As he turned away one last time, a tear fell down his cheek.  
  
He didn't reach up to wipe it away.  
  
It was for Sirius._ _  
__

* * *

_  
It was dark out and nowhere near a full moon. Indeed, there was only a sliver out, protruding from behind a thin wisp of clouds. Sitting there alone looking up at the sky, he realized this was the first time he had ever actually wished it were a full moon. Somethings, it now seemed, would just be easier to handle as the wolf.  
  
The wolf didn't care.  
  
He sighed and turned away from the window. He was in Regulus's room at the moment (yet another dead Black). He avoided entering the other parts of the house. They still reminded him too much of Sirius.  
  
It had been five days since the battle at the Ministry. No one else had come back to Grimwauld Place, save Dumbledore and that had been for... unsavory reasons. Not to say that his were any better. Remus wondered why he had volunteered to come back and look over the place.  
  
He didn't know why anyone had to come back. The Order had been forced to relocate due to Kreacher's treachery. Not only was Sirius gone but now so was their only safe-haven. Remus hated that he had compared anything to the lost of his friend. They had found a new, temporary headquarters at the Burrow.  
  
But no one could ever replace Sirius.  
  
Buckbeak refused to come out of his room. When Sirius hadn't come back, the hippogriff had known that something was wrong. The animal had amazing instincts. Everytime Remus tried to enter the room, he bowed but was sent running by the creature's sharp tallons and angered beak.  
  
He threw in a few rats now and then but it didn't seem to matter. The hippogriff refused to eat.  
  
"I know how you feel," Remus had muttered to the beast once after being run from the room. "I know exactly how you feel..."  
  
He really did.  
  
The young man's face was riddled with even more premature wrinkles than before. He had seen yet another friend die... He'd seen his last friend die.  
  
'You're finally really alone, Remus,' he told himself as he left Regulus's old room.  
  
He'd been there for two days now. He thought maybe he'd be able to bring himself to some sort of closure. Instead, Remus seemed to be falling into an even deeper depression.  
  
Against Molly's wishes, he'd had his things moved from the Burrow back to Grimwauld Place. He'd been living in the Weasley's attic for the past few months after relocating the old ghoul to an abandoned barn about a half a miles from the house. He seemed to be enjoying his change in surroundings, thorougly enjoying terrorising unsuspecting Muggle teenagers engaged in... questionable passtimes.  
  
Remus couldn't say he felt the same way about his new surroundings.  
  
Going through some old books in the library, he'd come across a photo album he realized Sirius must have moved back from his apartmnent after his parents' deaths. He had recognized it immediately but hadn't been able to bring himself to open it yet.  
  
Walking into that room now, he picked it up and sat down in the chair by the fire place. The fire still roared from earlier in the evening when he had sat there, lost in thought. No, lost in mourning. He couldn't really think any more. Not very coherently.  
  
He opened the front cover.  
  
_'Dearest Sirius,   
I know you've never been one much   
to keep track of things so I figured   
this might help you out. I know you   
have all those old pictures still just   
laying about your apartment. Now   
you have somewhere to put them all.   
If you need help scrap booking just ask.  
  
Love, Lyria.'_  
  
Already he found himself on the brink of tears. He remembered Lyria well. She'd been in their year, a great friend of Lily's. For a while she and Sirius had been an item. He often wondered if they would have been wed someday. That never did come to pass. She died March 12, 1980 at home with her family. A couple of Death Eaters had realized how important she was in the fight agaisnt the Dark Lord and had decided to get rid of her.  
  
She wasn't in the Order picture. That had been, perhaps, the hardest part about looking at that picture Mad-Eye Moody had come across.  
  
Especially for Sirius.  
  
Lupin considered closing the album. Already too many memories were surfacing.  
  
The album was chaotic and void of any order, he realized, flipping to the first page of pictures. It looked like Sirius had picked them up off his apartment floor and just pasted them in as he went. Thinking of that, he almost smiled. Remus knew that was exactly what he had done.  
  
With every paged, there were more memories. Happier memories. There was the time Sirius and James had set off all those dungbombs in the Slytherin Common Room late one after... getting it from Severus. They'd taken pictures and posted them everywhere. He chuckled to himself, remembering the massive amount of Detention they had had to serve with Prewitt afterwards.  
  
There was a picture of James, twelve, riding the giant squid and Peter trailing behind, clinging tightly to a tentacle. Oddly, he couldn't be angry at Peter in that picture. That wasn't Peter Pettigrew. That was Wormtail. He laughed, regardless.  
  
An later set of pictures, Christmas 1977. There were James and Lily on the couch smiling and waving at the camera. There was himself, he saw, holding up an orange leash and muzzle Sirius had gotten him. In the next picture, Sirius held up a matching, but red set Remus had gotten him. A picture of Sirius and Lyria by the fire... Remus smiled, remembering the reaction of the two of them just seconds later when they realized he'd taken it. It'd taken James nearly twenty minutes to figure out how to remedy the curse.  
  
James's wedding was next. Obviously the album was irreprably out of order. He peeked ahead and saw that the pages following the wedding pages were from the third year, perhaps second. But then he flipped back to the pages of wedding pictures. As much as he wanted to skip them, to keep himself from the memories, he didn't. He had to see them again.  
  
Lily and James at the alter reading their vows. Lyria wipping an uncharacteristic tear from her eye while Sirius held her. The boquet being thrown and Lyria catching it over and over again. There was James with Sirius as his best man. A picture of the four of them. Peter was still a head shorter than all of them. Sirius and Lyria dancing. Sirius and Lyria kissing. Sirius and Lyria making out during the reception...  
  
They're wedding was supposed to have been that following summer.  
  
Remus reached up and wiped a tear from his eye. He didn't know why he was torturing himself this way. Each page just added more and more memories to his already burdened mind. But he couldn't put the book down. Not now. He couldn't explain it. He just... he had to remember.  
  
Because all he had any more were memories.  
  
Second year, Sirius's first year on the Gryffindor team. He held his bat proudly and swung at imaginery bludgers. About two minutes later, her remembered when faced with a real bludger, he had instictively run for cover first and went back to save everyone else second. He'd changed extremely over the next few years.  
  
Sixth year, there was the four of them again about three weeks into the school year. Remus noticed he was a bit pale. Must have been a full moon. Indeed, there were bags under Peter's eyes but James and Sirius grinned brightly. They always did enjoy that much more than he ever did.  
  
From there on there were an odd assortment of pictures. First through Seventh year were mixed in together, even some later pictures from the time surrounding Lily and James's wedding but before Harry's birth. He remembered almost every picture. There were some private pictures of Sirius and Lyria mixed him. With each one, he smiled sadly. They had been so happy... they'd all been so happy...  
  
Now they were all dead.  
  
He flipped a few more pages now, not really looking at the pictures. unconciously, he knew he was looking for something but he didn't really know what.  
  
Another page was flipped and he knew he had found it.  
  
It was a warn picture. Remus knew that Sirius must have carried it in his pocket for atleast three months after it was taken. There was Sirius, holding an infant Harry gently in his arms. He was grinning widely as the baby slept peacefully. Remus knew that it was the first time he had smiled in several months. After he had lost Lyria... Sirius had rarely smiled at all.  
  
Remus took the picture out of the album and placed it on the table beside him. He knew someone that would likely appreciate it. Not now, he knew. The pain was too great, too recent. But in a few months, perhaps as a diversion to his time spent in the confines of his Muggle home, Remus would send it to him.  
  
He knew Harry would want it.  
  
There were several other pictures of Sirius with Harry but they were all generally the same. He picked out a few, including one with a young Harry being baited by James and Lily to 'go find Uncle Sirius' in an attempt to get him to take his first steps. The boy, held up by Lily and followed along by James, took two steps before falling unceremoniously to upon his bottom. Remus smiled.  
  
Sirius had really loved Harry. In the end, he had given his life for the boy.  
  
Though Remus did not have the same connection with the boy, he knew that he would die for him, as well.  
  
And that was something worth living for.

* * *

"He's going to be okay, Hagrid?" Remus asked as he stood outside the half- giant's cottage. "He hasn't eaten in about a week..."  
  
Hagrid shook his head. "He'll be fine, Remus. Ye did the bst ye could. I don figure 'e'll be too comfortable for a while what with Sirius and all." The large man hung his head sadly. "'ow'er you doin' yerself?"  
  
He didn't answer for a moment. He wasn't sure how to answer. His best friend, his last friend in the world had died just a week before. You didn't get over that easily. It still hurt every time he thought of Sirius. He still replayed his death at night in his dreams. "I'm doing okay, Hagrid," he answered in the end. "Really I am."  
  
There were a few parting words and Remus turned back to pick up his bags. He walked up to the castle, fielding salutations from several of his previous pupils and grinning at the wild whispers he heard as he passed by.  
  
He came to the gargoyle and whispered the password and watched as it slid to the side. Often Remus had come to this place, as a Prefect, troublemake, student, teacher... it was a comforting place. One of the few comforting places he knew.  
  
"Ah, Remus," Dumbledore greeted as the younger man entered the office. "Molly has asked me to tell you that they've fixed that leaky pipe in the attic."  
  
Remus smiled. "They really don't need to do this."  
  
He nodded. "They dont need to do any of this. Yet, they do. They risk everything for this cause. We can not deny them the satisfaction of helping one of their own, now can we?"  
  
The younger man just nodded.  
  
"How are you holding up, Remus?" Dumbledore asked.  
  
"Well enough, I suppose," he answered wearily. "After all, we've still go Harry."  
  
Dumbledore nodded. "Yes. We've still got Harry."  
  
He treated the young man to tea but few words were passed. After about half an hour, Remus stood and gathered up his thigns again. Dumbledore smiled and gave him a few parting words of wisdom before handing him the canister of floo powder.  
  
"Thinks are going to work out, in the end," Dumbledore told him as Remus threw the powder into the fire and called out for the Burrow.  
  
Remus turned to the headmaster before entering the green flames.  
  
"Of course they will," he agreed. "We've still got Harry."  
  
And that was all that would really matter in the end. 


End file.
